In failing to build a company, I have learned many things. Core to all of them is that a company is not a product. Ideas change, products change, people change. We “pivot”, rapidly, relentlessly, sometimes ruthlessly.

Managed well, change is a catalyst. Managed badly, it can be catastrophic.

In this series, I try to explain the various ways in which I failed to understand this, and how I would endeavour to do better next time. You may notice that the style of these posts is more instructive than usual. Remember that these are mostly addressed to my future self, and as such, I am telling myself what to do; you, my dear completionist, can do whatever you want.

I am a millennial, and therefore I want to be friends with all my co-workers. I thrive in a place where we can play a game of table tennis in the break room, talk about listening to covers of metal songs by angry Finns playing the cello, or simply grab a beer (and talk incessantly about beer, because nerdery is not limited to computers). Since working from home, I really appreciate a chat over coffee, even if it is through a screen.

At Prodo, we used to play Dungeons & Dragons every Tuesday night. It was a wonderful way to bond with my team and get to know each other.

And yet, it strikes me now that perhaps I could have seen it as a warning sign, because it was the work event I looked forward to the most.

I worked with lovely people who I consider friends, even if we don’t talk too often nowadays. It turns out that doesn’t make a company.

Perhaps if I’d invested that energy into pair-programming more with the developers, or trying to push for a product that customers loved, things might have gone better.

Friendship is excellent, but don’t mistake it for doing a good job; we can do that and still clock out at 5pm every day. We don’t need to drink together to be able to work together on system architecture, or a sales strategy.

Though, of course, it helps.

Thanks for all the fish

This is the last article in the series, at least for now. I hope you found it informative and at least a little entertaining.

If you do have any feedback, or just want to say hi, please drop me a comment, a tweet, or an email. Details are at the bottom of every post on the website (so click through if you’re reading this in a feed reader).

Cheers all. I found this very fun to write.

1. Introduction
2. Focus on the problem, not the solution
3. If the company goals change, the company should probably change too
4. "Do research" is not a corporate strategy
5. Your corporate values transcend your product vision
6. Trust your gut, understand your heart, and open your mind
7. Go to therapy with your co-founders
8. Explore the terrain first
9. Unless someone cares, don't waste your time
10. Code is a liability; ship without coding, if possible
11. Do less, and do it better
12. Agile methods are tools to try more ideas in less time
13. Until you have traction, money is a trap
14. If you don’t know how to do it, that’s your biggest problem
15. Roles can be fluid, but they must be defined
16. Camaraderie is helpful, but no substitute for working together

Perhaps you've heard of the term "microkitchen". I believe it originated at Google, or perhaps that's where it was made famous. It doesn't really matter. It's the term used to describe those areas in a company which might have a coffee machine, snacks, and perhaps a refrigerator/cooler with some kind of chilled drinks inside.

Some other companies have the same sort of thing going on. They don't always get the same name applied (sometimes they're just "kitchens"), but similar behaviors seem to follow them around.

For example, did you ever notice that a certain product never seems to be in stock? Then, one day, you changed your routine and arrived early, only to see someone making off with six bottles at once? They must have been doing it for a while, right? You just happened to catch them. Maybe this really grabs your attention and you decide to post a heartfelt plea to some internal group or mailing list asking for people to not do this.

Imagine, then, if the guilty party actually replied and explained what was happening. Well, this has happened at least once, and I'm fortunate to have a copy of the text in question. Are you ready for this?

For the context, it was me - taking 6 Tejava bottles and stocking them into our team's minifridge. I disagree that it was rude, I'm saving myself from trip to the microkitchen on every bottle.

The problem is when I come in the morning, there are only 0-6 Tejava bottles in the fridge, I drink 3-4 bottles a day and if I don't stock up in the morning, there is no Tejava left in the fridge by noon and I have to scavenge ALL surrounding microkitchens in the same building and in ALL adjacent buildings to quench my thirst. This is not the situation I like to be in.

Tejava is clearly in high demand and if the short supply makes employees fight for it, I think there is a simpler solution.

This is not a joke. This actually happened. This is real.

You can pick your jaw up off the floor now.

Ever wonder how "the tragedy of the commons" happens? Does this help?

Earth House Estate Lättenstrasse by Vetsch Architektur in Switzerland

An earth-covered, subterranean community of nine homes. The daytime areas are situated towards the south, the nighttime area towards the north. In the middle, you find the bathrooms and the connecting stairs to the basement. Natural light is provided through sunlights in the living roof.  

In which Google be Google and I drop a hot AGPL tip.

Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project
Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones

to automate the identification and classification of images taken by drones — cars, buildings, people — providing analysts with increased ability to make informed decisions on the battlefield

These news reports don't mention reCaptcha explicitly, but it's been asking about a lot of cars lately. Whatever the source of the data that Google is using for this, it's disgusting that they're mining it from us without our knowledge or consent.

Google claims that "The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only". So, if a drone operator has a neural network that we all were tricked & coerced into training to identify cars and people helping to highlight them on their screen and center the crosshairs just right, and the neural network is not pressing the kill switch, is it being used for "non-offensive purposes only"?

Google is known to be deathly allergic to the AGPL license. Not only on servers; they don't even allow employees to use AGPL software on workstations. If you write free software, and you'd prefer that Google not use it, a good way to ensure that is to license it under the AGPL.

I normally try to respect the privacy of users of my software, and of personal conversations. But at this point, I feel that Google's behavior has mostly obviated those moral obligations. So...

Now seems like a good time to mention that I have been contacted by multiple people at Google about several of my AGPL licensed projects (git-annex and either keysafe or debug-me I can't remember which) trying to get me to switch them to the GPL, and had long conversations with them about it.

Google has some legal advice that the AGPL source provision triggers much more often than it's commonly understood to. I encouraged them to make that legal reasoning public, so the community could address/debunk it, but I don't think they have. I won't go into details about it here, other than it seemed pretty bonkers.

Mixing in some AGPL code with an otherwise GPL codebase also seems sufficient to trigger Google's allergy. In the case of git-annex, it's possible to build all releases (until next month's) with a flag that prevents linking with any AGPL code, which should mean the resulting binary is GPL licensed, but Google still didn't feel able to use it, since the git-annex source tree includes AGPL files.

I don't know if Google's allergy to the AGPL extends to software used for drone murder applications, but in any case I look forward to preventing Google from using more of my software in the future.

(Illustration by scatter//gather)